Textile manufacturing industry includes conversion of fiber or filaments into yarn and from yarn to fabric that is further processed.
Conventionally, filament yarn is produced by melting and extrusion of polymer chips in an extruder or directly from polymer melt coming from a continuous polymerization plant. Polymer may be a polyester, polyamide, polypropylene, polytrimethylene terephthalate, Polybutylene terephthalate, etc. Polymer melt is pressed through holes in spinnerets to form streams that are quenched to form filaments. The filaments are grouped to form a filament yarn with desired evenness, strength, shrinkage, elongation and other properties. During the processing, the filament yarns may be oriented or drawn to form low, medium, partially, high, fully oriented or fully drawn yarn.
The filament yarns are put through an additional process called texturing or texturizing (“Texturizing Process”) to give texture, crimp, bulk, strength to the filament yarn and to vary its look and feel. Textured filament yarn includes draw textured yarn and air textured yarn (together “DTY”) etc. In the texturizing process, the filament yarn is given an texture either by false twisting in an false twist unit wherein twisting and detwisting takes place or by an fluid like air. Textured yarn is mainly used in weaving & knitting of fabrics for making clothes outer/inner garments, skin-clinging garments, home furnishings, seat covers, bags upholstery, bed sheets and many other uses.
“Plying” is done by taking two or more strands of yarn (filament yarn or a textured yarn) and putting them together.
“Multi-ply yarns” as referred herein are basically two or more yarns plyed together. Each yarn in the multi-ply may be referred to as a ply. Multi-ply yarns may be untwisted or unplyed to an individual ply.
“Interlaced yarns”: The yarns during processing may be passed through interlacing jets to interlace the filaments within the yarn. Such yarns are referred herein as “Interlaced yarns”. Interlacing helps to bind the filaments within the yarns.
“Separable interlaced yarn” as referred herein is a single ply interlaced yarn and that can be split/unplyed from the multi-ply yarns.
“Non-separable yarn” as referred herein is single ply yarn that cannot be split/unplyed from the multi-ply yarns.
“Multi-ply separable interlaced filament yarn” as referred herein is a multi-ply yarn that is separable in to at least two separable interlaced filament yarn, wherein the interlacing of the filaments within each separable interlaced filament yarn is retained during further processing of the yarn to fabric and in the fabric.
“Multi-ply separable textured yarn” as referred herein is a multi-ply yarn that is separable in to at least two separable interlaced textured yarn, wherein the interlacing of the filaments within each separable interlaced draw textured yarn is retained during further processing of the yarn to fabric and in the fabric.
Separable interlaced yarns are used amongst other in bed sheets wherein fine and super fine separable interlaced yarns are used to increase the thread count of the fabric.
Thread count is the number of threads woven into one square inch of fabric. This number is based on the threads woven horizontally (“weft”) and vertically (“warp”). Weft insertions in an fabric are called as “picks”. Thread count is increased by using multi-ply separable draw textured yarns and inserting in the weft. For example a Thread count of 1100 could be formed by taking 200 yarns per inch of any material in the warp say 50s cotton and inserting in weft 75 picks per inch in the weft and each pick will have 12 ply separable textured yarn. So the weft would have 900 (75*12) yarns per inch and total thread count is 1100 (900+200). Accordingly the warp may also have multi-ply separable yarns to achieve very high thread counts.
For manufacturing multi-ply separable draw textured yarn in conventional processes, filament yarn is fed through a feed roller and passed through a heater, cooling plate and a false-twist unit having disks where the twisting and de-twisting, also known as false twisting takes place at a high speed. The yarn is further passed through an intermediate roller or a ‘draw roller’. The draw roller draws the yarn while it is heated in the primary heater and getting twisted and de-twisted in the false-twist unit. This gives the yarn the required bulkiness or fluffiness, also referred to as texturizing. The yarn coming out of the draw roller is called as textured yarn. The yarn is then passed through interlacing jets to interlace the filaments within the yarn.
In order to make separable texturized yarns, two or more texturized yarns are wound/plied/grouped together in a single bobbin after passing through an interlacing process. Since the filaments of each yarn are interlaced, each yarn ply gets separated resulting in multi-ply separable textured yarns.
On an industrial scale the textured yarns are produced on a textured machine. In a texture machine there are “X” number of spindles, and “X” number of textured packages are formed at a time if no plying is done. When, plying is done for making multi-ply separable texturized yarns, the number of packages formed at a time is “X” divided by the number of plies. If “n” ply separable textured yarns are made having “d” denier of ply yarns, then the number of textured yarn packages that is made is X/n. This requires “X” number of filament yarn packages and the denier of the wound yarn is d*n. However, if one ply breaks, the other remaining ply or plies are also required have to be broken, which makes the industrial process inefficient.
Thus the conventional system and/or method of manufacturing multi-ply separable textured yarn has inherent issues such as low productivity, high production cost per kilogram of yarn of a particular denier, and poor capability produce low/fine and ultra-low/fine denier yarns.
The system/method of manufacturing multi-ply separable textured yarn, in accordance with the present disclosure, aims to resolve issues of low production and low productivity associated with the conventional separable multi-ply yarn manufacturing.